Mapping urban fingerprints of odonyms automatically extracted from French novels

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose and discuss a methodology to map the spatial fingerprints of novels and authors based on all of the named urban roads (i.e., odonyms) extracted from novels. We present several ways to explore Parisian space and fictional landscapes by interactively and simultaneously browsing geographical space and literary text. Our project involves building a platform capable of retrieving, mapping and analyzing the occurrences of named urban roads in novels in which the action occurs wholly or partly in Paris. This platform will be used in several areas, such as cultural tourism, urban research, and literary analysis. The paper focuses on extracting named urban roads and mapping the results for a sample of 31 novels published between 1800 and 1914. Two approaches to the annotation of odonyms are compared. First, we describe a proof of concept using queries made via the TXM textual analysis platform. Then, we describe an automatic process using a natural language processing (NLP) method. Additionally, we mention how the geosemantic information annotated from the text (e.g., a structure combining verbs, spatial relations, named entities, adjectives and adverbs) can be used to automatically characterize the semantic content associated with named urban roads.     

POLITICS AND MEDIA RICHNESS IN WORLD WIDE WEB REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

ABSTRACT. Media-richness theory is applied to World Wide Web sites to demonstrate how Web-page designers are using hypertext markup language to shape conceptions of place and to provide competing visions of the events that have transpired in the former Yugoslavia. We argue that Web sites vary in their interactivity, strategically, to reduce equivocality surrounding conceptions of space and territory. Media-richness theory as applied here allows the development of a heuristic to understand how Web pages communicate information about geographical entities and help to shape perceptions of place.     

Modelling the history of semi-structured geographical entities

Geographical entities are characterized by rather complex structures. They involve space and thematic information, which is subject to change in time, while history should be maintained. On the other hand, these structures may be irregular (i.e. they do not necessarily conform to a fixed schema), because associated data is usually collected based on different specifications and multiple resolutions. Hence, the representation of geographical entities in traditional data models, such as the relational or object-oriented, is not always feasible. In this respect, this paper investigates the use of semi-structured data (SSD) models—an innovative approach recently developed in Information Technology—for modelling dynamic geographical entities. A framework for the representation of geographic entities in Object Exchange Model (OEM), a popular model for semi-structured data, is introduced. Additionally, it is shown how useful information can be extracted from such a representation using the LOREL query language for SSD. A simplified case study in the application domain of cadastre involving SSD is examined closely.     

GIS for Water Resources and Watershed Management. Edited by JOHN G. LYON (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002). [Pp. vii+266]. ISBN: 0-415-28607-7. Price £45. Hardback

Nowadays, a huge quantity of information is stored in digital format. A great portion of this information is constituted by textual and unstructured documents, where geographical references are usually given by means of place names. A common problem with textual information retrieval is represented by polysemous words, that is, words can have more than one sense. This problem is present also in the geographical domain: place names may refer to different locations in the world. In this paper we investigate the use of our word sense disambiguation technique in the geographical domain, with the aim of resolving ambiguous place names. Our technique is based on WordNet conceptual density. Due to the lack of a reference corpus tagged with WordNet senses, we carried out the experiments over a set of 1,210 place names extracted from the SemCor corpus that we named GeoSemCor and made publicly available. We compared our method with the most‐frequent baseline and the enhanced‐Lesk method, which previously has not been tested in large contexts. The results show that a better precision can be achieved by using a small context (phrase level), whereas a greater coverage can be obtained by using large contexts (document level). The proposed method should be tested with other corpora, due to the fact that our experiments evidenced the excessive bias towards the most‐frequent sense of the GeoSemCor.     

Enabling maps/location searches on mobile devices: constructing a POI database via focused crawling and information extraction

With the popularity of mobile devices and smartphones, we have witnessed rapid growth in mobile applications and services, especially in location-based services (LBS). According to a mobile marketing survey, maps/location searches are among the most utilized services on smartphones. Points of interest (POIs), such as stores, shops, gas stations, parking lots, and bus stops, are particularly important for maps/location searches. Existing map services such as Google Maps and Wikimapia are constructed manually either professionally or with crowd sourcing. However, manual annotation is costly and limited in current POI search services. With the abundance of information on the Web, many store POIs can be extracted from the Web. In this paper, we focus on automatically constructing a POI database to enable store POI map searches. We propose techniques that are required to construct a POI database, including focused crawling, information extraction, and information retrieval techniques. We first crawl Yellow Page web sites to obtain vocabularies of store names. These vocabularies are then investigated with search engines to obtain sentences containing these store names from search snippets in order to train a store name recognition model. To extract POIs scattered across the Web, we propose a query-based crawler to find address-bearing pages that might be used to extract addresses and store names. We crawled 1.25 million distinct POI pairs scattered across the Web and implemented a POI search service via Apache Lucent’s search platform, called Solr. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed geographical information retrieval model outperforms Wikimapia and a commercial app called ‘What’s the Number?’     

对自然地理区划方法的认识与思考

在研习和继承前人区划研究工作与成果的基础上, 着重于自然地理区划方法论及其体系的探讨。首先, 深入阐述了自然地理区划的内涵, 认为: 自然地理区划既是区域划分的结 果, 也是区域划分的方法与过程, 同时还是认识地理特征和发现地理规律的一种科学方法。 第二, 假设性认为自然地理区划是客观存在的, 针对不同的区划目的和采用不同的区划原则 所形成了不同类型的自然地理区划, 如部门区划与综合区划、区域区划与类型区划等, 则构 成了对区划对象的多角度认识, 并且这些区划间存在内在联系, 具有一定的一致性和可转换性。第三, 在分析总结各种自然地理区划方案研究的基础上, 提出了包括区划本体、区划原 则、区划等级系统、区划模型和区划信息系统的自然地理区划范式, 其中自然地理区划原则、等级系统和区划模型构成了区划方法的核心, 并且通过区划模型, 实现区划原则、指标体系 和单位等级系统的综合。最后, 论文对自然地理区划信息系统研究所涉及的主要科学问题和 主要功能作了简要的说明和讨论, 并指出: 在地理空间单元理论的指导下, 可以实现在统一 的科学框架下的各种自然地理区划的集成, 并为开展综合区划研究提供可用的技术方法。     

Are Chinese resource-exhausted cities in remote locations?

Numerous domestic scholars have argued that a remote location is the major factor preventing the transformation and sustainable development of resource-exhausted cities. Research to date, however, has not presented relevant evidence to support this hypothesis or explained how to identify the concept of ‘remoteness’. Resource-exhausted cities designated by the State Council of China were examined in this study alongside the provincial capital cities that contain such entities and three regional central cities that are closely connected to this phenomenon: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Spatial and temporal distances are used to calculate and evaluate the location remoteness degrees (LRDs) of resource-exhausted cities, in terms of both resource types and regions. The results indicate that resource-exhausted cities are indeed remote from the overall samples. Based on spatial distances, the LRDs are α₁ = 1.36 (i.e., distance to provincial capital city) and β₁ = 1.14 (i.e., distance to regional central city), but when based on temporal distances, α₂ = 2.02 (i.e., distance to provincial capital city) and β₂ = 1.44 (i.e., distance to regional central city). Clear differences are found in the LRDs between different regions and resource types, with those in western China and forest industrial cities the most obviously remote. Finally, the numbers of very remote resource-exhausted cities based on spatial and temporal distances (i.e., α > 1.5 ∩ β > 1.5) are 14 and 19, respectively, encompassing 17.9% and 24.4% of the total sampled. Similarly, 25 and 30 not remote resource-exhausted cities based on spatial and temporal distances (i.e., α ≤1.0 ∩ β ≤ 1.0) encompass 32.1% and 38.5% of the total, respectively. This study provided supporting information for the future development and policy making for resource-exhausted cities given different LRDs.     

Web2.0环境中的地理想象建构及其机制研究

Web2.0环境为网民提供了线上产消（即网络文化生产与消费相结合）的平台,其产消结果为地理想象研究提供了新素材。研究基于地理想象的相关理论,以百度贴吧“波兰球吧”为案例,通过对网络漫画“波兰球”进行内容分析,并对“波兰球吧”用户展开结构化访谈,探讨线上产消者在“波兰球”漫画中建构的全球地理想象特征及其机制。研究认为：产消者通过“波兰球”漫画表征世界地理,建构了关于全球地缘关系的“中心-边缘”结构的地理想象;产消者基于中国的本土视角在漫画中建构世界各国（地区）的地理想象;产消者在“波兰球”漫画中的地理想象建构机制是一种基于互动的产消实践。     

Is GIS appropriate technologyquest;

Abstract

Appropriate technology (AT) has become an integral part of the programmes for decentralized regional development in the Third World. ‘Appropriate’ techniques are usually low in capital costs; they can be maintained without a high level of expertise; and they do not involve patents, expensive copyrights and royalties. By these criteria a commercial geographical information system (GIS) is not an appropriate technology to be used in decentralized development However, the use of local renewable resources involves the adoption of end-use analysis for matching end-uses to specific sources so as to minimize the consumption of material and energy (i.e., minimize entropy). This matching requires much information which leads to what may be called the 'information-entropy trade-off; minimization of entropy requires an inverse increase in information. In this respect computers and GIS have an important contribution to make to decentralized regional planning. Drawing on a case study in Sri Lanka, this paper presents some ideas on how to incorporate GIS into local-level planning information systems.     

Relational spatial topologies for historical geographical information

Abstract

Research on time and data models for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has focused mainly in the representation of temporal geographical entities and implementation of temporal databases. Many temporal GIS database structures have been proposed but most of them just provide principles, not the recipe for the design. Owing to the manipulation of the large quantity of geographical information and the slow response time, few implementations exist. This paper presents a relational method of storing and retrieving spatial and temporal topologies. Two-level state topologies are proposed: a state topology for a set of geographical entities and a state topology for a single geographical entity.

From a temporal perspective, these two-level state topologies may also be viewed as two-level time topologies: a time topology for all geographical entities in a GIS database and a time topology for a single geographical entity. Based on these state and time topologies, a detailed storage approach for historical geographical information is provided.     

A data‐mining approach for assessing consistency between multiple representations in spatial databases

When different spatial databases are combined, an important issue is the identification of inconsistencies between data. Quite often, representations of the same geographical entities in databases are different and reflect different points of view. In order to fully take advantage of these differences when object instances are associated, a key issue is to determine whether the differences are normal, i.e. explained by the database specifications, or if they are due to erroneous or outdated data in one database. In this paper, we propose a knowledge‐based approach to partially automate the consistency assessment between multiple representations of data. The inconsistency detection is viewed as a knowledge‐acquisition problem, the source of knowledge being the data. The consistency assessment is carried out by applying a proposed method called MECO. This method is itself parameterized by some domain knowledge obtained from a second method called MACO. MACO supports two approaches (direct or indirect) to perform the knowledge acquisition using data‐mining techniques. In particular, a supervised learning approach is defined to automate the knowledge acquisition so as to drastically reduce the human‐domain expert's work. Thanks to this approach, the knowledge‐acquisition process is sped up and less expert‐dependent. Training examples are obtained automatically upon completion of the spatial data matching. Knowledge extraction from data following this bottom‐up approach is particularly useful, since the database specifications are generally complex, difficult to analyse, and manually encoded. Such a data‐driven process also sheds some light on the gap between textual specifications and those actually used to produce the data. The methodology is illustrated and experimentally validated by comparing geometrical representations and attribute values of different vector spatial databases. The advantages and limits of such partially automatic approaches are discussed, and some future works are suggested.     

Are opinions expressed in land-use planning documents?

A great deal of research on information extraction from textual datasets has been performed in specific data contexts, such as movie reviews, commercial product evaluations, campaign speeches, etc. In this paper, we raise the question on how appropriate these methods are for documents related to land-use planning. The kind of information sought concerns the stakeholders, sentiments, geographic information, and everything else related to the territory. However, it is extremely challenging to link sentiments to the three dimensions that constitute geographic information (location, time, and theme). After highlighting the limitations of existing proposals and discussing issues related to textual data, we present a method called OPILAND (OPinion mIning from LAND-use planning documents) designed to semi-automatically mine opinions related to named-entities in specialized contexts. Experiments are conducted on a Thau lagoon dataset (France), and then applied on three datasets that are related to different areas in order to highlight the relevance and the broader applications of our proposal.     

基于XML Schema的多源地名词典集成方法

目前,我国已经构建大量不同级别、面向不同应用的地名词典,网络大众化地名服务成为地名词典的必然发展趋势。该文提出一种基于XML Schema的多源异构地名词典集成方法,以XML Schema对地名词典进行数据描述,采用XSLT数据转换方法,运用MapForce软件,快速进行地名词典的数据结构映射,能够有效解决地名词典的跨平台及数据类型不统一问题。     

国外旅游研究领域Web点击流分析研究进展

Web点击流数据记录了在线旅游者使用互联网实际发生的电子记录,为旅游研究提供了新机会。该文介绍了Web点击流数据的特性及Web点击流数据分析在旅游研究中的价值,回顾了国外Web点击流分析在旅游研究领域的相关进展,包括旅游网站(目的地网站和酒店网站)访问者行为、旅游者在线信息搜索以及旅游目的地建议系统等,并对其发展前景进行了讨论。     

Quantification of spatial gradation of slope positions

Transition between slope positions (e.g., ridge, shoulder slope, back slope, foot slope, and valley) is often gradual. Quantification of spatial transitions or spatial gradations between slope positions can increase the accuracy of terrain parameterization for geographical or ecological modeling, especially for digital soil mapping at a fine scale. Current models for characterizing the spatial gradation of slope positions based on a gridded DEM either focus solely on the parameter space or depend on too many rules defined by topographic attributes, which makes such approaches impractical. The typical locations of a slope position contain the characteristics of the slope position in both parameter space and spatial context. Thus, the spatial gradation of slope positions can be quantified by comparing terrain characteristics (spatial and parametrical) of given locations to those at typical locations. Based on this idea, this paper proposes an approach to quantifying the spatial gradation of slope positions by using typical locations as prototypes. This approach includes two parts: the first is to extract the typical locations of each slope position and treat them as the prototypes of this position; and the second is to compute the similarity between a given location and the prototypes based on both local topographic attributes and spatial context. The new approach characterizes slope position gradation in both the attribute domain (i.e., parameter space) and the spatial domain (i.e., geographic space) in an easy and practicable way. Applications show that the new approach can quantitatively describe spatial gradations among a set of slope positions. Comparison of spatial gradation of A-horizon sand percentages with the quantified spatial gradation of slope positions indicates that the latter reflects slope processes, confirming the effectiveness of the approach. The comparison of a soil subgroup map of the study area with the maximum similarity map derived from the approach also suggests that the quantified spatial gradation of slope position can be used to aid geographical modeling such as digital soil mapping.     

Accuracy assessment of georectified aerial photographs: Implications for measuring lateral channel movement in a GIS

Aerial photographs are commonly used to measure planform river channel change. We investigated the sources and implications of georectification error in the measurement of lateral channel movement by testing how the number (6–30) and type (human versus natural landscape features) of ground-control points (GCPs) and the order of the transformation polynomial (first-, second-, and third-order) affected the spatial accuracy of a typical georectified aerial photograph. Error was assessed using the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the GCPs as well as error in 31 independent test points. The RMSE and the mean and median values of test-point errors were relatively insensitive to the number of GCPs above eight, but the upper range of test-point errors showed marked improvement (i.e., the number of extreme errors was reduced) as more GCPs were used for georectification. Using more GCPs thus improved overall georectification accuracy, but this improvement was not indicated by the RMSE, suggesting that independent test-points located in key areas of interest should be used in addition to RSME to evaluate georectification error.The order of the transformation polynomial also influenced test-point accuracy; the second-order polynomial function yielded the best result for the terrain of the study area. GCP type exerted a less consistent influence on test-point accuracy, suggesting that although hard-edged points (e.g., roof corners) are favored as GCPs, some soft-edged points (e.g., trees) may be used without adding significant error. Based upon these results, we believe that aerial photos of a floodplain landscape similar to that of our study can be consistently georectified to an accuracy of approximately ± 5 m, with 10% chance of greater error. The implications of georectification error for measuring lateral channel movement are demonstrated with a multiple buffer analysis, which documents the inverse relationship between the size of the buffers applied to two channel centerlines and the magnitude of change detected between them. This study demonstrates the importance of using an independent test-point analysis in addition to the RSME to evaluate and treat locational error in channel change studies.     

INTERNET上的地理信息科学资源

Internet具有重要的地理信息科学资源。地理信息的标准是保证网络传播地理信息的前提条件，也是推动地理信息科学数据共享的基础。借助于搜索工具，点击与地理信息科学相关的一些网站或者关键词，就可以寻找到所需要的地理信息资源。众多的Rs、GIS、GPS、制图、数字地球、全球变化、资源环境以及各种出版物和研究机构等网站，可以为地理信息科学的研究提供重要条件，网络资源需要进一步的挖掘和应用。     

Investigation of Arctic and Antarctic spatial and depth patterns of sea water in CTD profiles using chemometric data analysis

In this paper we examine 2- and 3-way chemometric methods for analysis of Arctic and Antarctic water samples. Standard CTD (conductivity–temperature–depth) sensor devices were used during two oceanographic expeditions (July 2007 in the Arctic; February 2009 in the Antarctic) covering a total of 174 locations. The output from these devices can be arranged in a 3-way data structure (according to sea water depth, measured variables, and geographical location). We used and compared 2- and 3-way statistical tools including PCA, PARAFAC, PLS, and N-PLS for exploratory analysis, spatial patterns discovery and calibration. Particular importance was given to the correlation and possible prediction of fluorescence from other physical variables. MATLAB's mapping toolbox was used for geo-referencing and visualization of the results. We conclude that: 1) PCA and PARAFAC models were able to describe data in a satisfactory way, but PARAFAC results were easier to interpret; 2) applying a 2-way model to 3-way data raises the risk of flattening the covariance structure of the data and losing information; 3) the distinction between Arctic and Antarctic seas was revealed mostly by PC1, relating to the physico-chemical properties of the water samples; and 4) we confirm the ability to predict fluorescence values from physical measurements when the 3-way data structure is used in N-way PLS regression.